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@beautifullyunspectacular13

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1,181 posts

Realization: The reason my friends dont invite me, forget about me, dont reach out to me——I need my friends, but they dont need me.

It feels sad and numb, but it also brings great clarity. Its not something Im doing wrong. Its not my fault. It just is.

I promise to never fall in love with a stranger.

K Ci and Jojo

Sometimes I wonder why people lie. I wonder why some people are so good at lying.

They want to convince you they didnt do something bad.

But mostly they want to convince themselves.

They believe their lies will become the truth instead of what already is.

They live their lives in the dark and try to drag their skeletons to the light of your doorstep.

Hoping for less guilt. Less self-hate. Less pain. Less punishment. Less responsibility.

But me. Id rather burn in the sunlight of my truth than perish in the darkness of my lies.

Like a moth to a flame-I might get burned, but at least Ill know I was honest about who I was the until the very end.

Looking back at men Ive dated, I start to see patterns. I start to see things I didnt even notice before. Clear signs of cheating and lying. But I just believed what I was told...

And then when the break up happens and it all falls apart, people point the finger at you and say “you stayed too long”, “you forgave too much”, “ you believed him”. Right, I believed. I didnt lie so I didnt imagine that someone else would lie. I couldnt see the point.

But then Im told “well youre the common denominator” and im left with self blame and disappointment.

But what about men? They just get to walk away. We never say, “the men who raised him shouldve been better to him”, we never say “that man should be held responsible, accountable for their own abusive behavior”.

We say “it was you woman. It was all you and all the choices you made. And all this abstract power you have that no one ever taught you to grab. The breaking of this relationship is your fault.”

The biggest oppressive, ultimate patriarchal excuse for man’s behavior; it was her fault.

He feels unworthy and hates himself. So he punishes me. I feel unworthy and hate myself. So I punish me.

Unworthy little boys grow egos too fragile to self-hate.

Unworthy little girls grow self-hate too strong to self-respect.

It’s deeply fucked up.

Most men think that sex will provide them with a sense of being alive, connected, that sex will offer closeness, intimacy, pleasure. And more often than not sex simply does not deliver the goods. This fact does not lead men to cease obsessing about sex; it intensifies their lust and their longing.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

Men who win on patriarchal terms end up losing in terms of their substantive quality of life. They choose patriarchal manhood over loving connection, first foregoing self-love and then the love they could give and receive that would connect them to others.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

If only one party in a relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle. Women who stay in long-term relationships with men who are emotionally abusive or violent usually end up closing the door to their hearts. They stop working to create love. Often they stay in these relationships because a basic cynicism, rooted in their experience, affirms that most men are emotionally withholding, so they do not believe that they can find a loving relationship with any man.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

Women seeking intimacy from men often find their expressions of longing belittled. Many men respond to females' wanting emotional connection with emotional withdrawal and, in worst case scenarios, with abuse.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

Women demanded of men that they give more emotionally, but most men really would not understand what was being asked of them. Having cut away the parts of themselves that could feel a wide range of emotional responses, they were too disconnected. They simply could not give more emotionally or even grasp the problem without first reconnecting, reuniting the severed parts.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother's love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

In patriarchal culture boys learn early that the authority of the mother is limited, that her power comes solely from being a caretaker of patriarchy.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

No man who does not actively choose to work to change and challenge patriarchy escapes its impact. The most passive, kind, quiet man can come to violence if the seeds of patriarchal thinking have been embedded in his psyche.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

Patriarchal boys, like their adult counterparts, know the rules: they know they must not express feelings, with the exception of anger; that they must not do anything considered feminine or womanly. Researchers found that boys agreed that to be truly manly, they must command respect, be tough, not talk about problems and dominate females.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

Women have believed that we could save the men in our lives by giving them love, that this love would serve as the cure for all the wounds inflicted by toxic assaults on their emotional systems, by the emotional heart attacks they undergo everyday. We can guide, instruct, observe, share information and skills, but we cannot do for boys and men what they must do for themselves. Our love helps, but alone does not save boys or men. Ultimately boys and men save themselves when they learn the art of loving.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

Everyone who tries to create love with an emotionally unaware partner suffers.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

When that real man is repeatedly cruel, when he responds to care and kindness with contempt and brutal disregard, the woman in his life begins to see him differently. She may begin to interrogate her own allegiance to patriarchal thinking. She may wake up and recognize that she is wedded to abuse, that she is not loved. That moment of awakening is the moment of heartbreak. Heartbroken women in longtime marriages or partnerships rarely leave their men. They learn to make an identity out of their suffering, their complaint, their bitterness.

bell hooks, The Will to Change

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